1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to heat dissipation members, electro-optical devices, and electronic apparatuses.
2. Related Art
Recent years have seen an increase in the demand for higher-luminosity projected images from projectors that use reflective liquid crystal elements (reflective liquid crystal panels). Although increasing the luminosity of the light source can be considered as one way of meeting this demand, doing so also increases the temperature of the reflective liquid crystal panel. In particular, the light sources used for such applications often do have only an uniform power distribution, and thus the temperature in the center area of the reflective liquid crystal panel (that is, the panel center) becomes hotter than the outer edge areas (that is, the panel outer edges), which dissipate heat more easily. When such a temperature distribution occurs, the liquid crystals in the panel center degrade at a faster rate than the liquid crystals in the panel outer edges, which can lead to the occurrence of color unevenness. Accordingly, various techniques have been considered in order to solve such a problem (for example, JP-A-2010-14809).
In JP-A-2010-14809, a thermally-conductive filling material disposed between the reflective liquid crystal panel and a heat dissipation portion is filled in a location on the back surface of the reflective liquid crystal panel that corresponds to a display region, and the heat from the entire display region is absorbed by the thermally-conductive filling material. Furthermore, the surface of the heat dissipation member that opposes the reflective liquid crystal panel is curved in a convex shape so that the center area of the heat dissipation member is closer to the reflective liquid crystal panel. The gap from the heat dissipation member in the center of the display region (a center gap) is smaller than the gaps from the heat dissipation member at the edges of that region (edge gaps) and the heat receiving efficiency of the heat dissipation member is greater in the center area than in the edge areas; in such a manner, the configuration attempts to make the temperature distribution uniform.
However, with JP-A-2010-14809, the thermally-conductive filling material is filled across the entirety of the display region, and thus there is almost no difference in the heat receiving efficiency throughout the display region. Furthermore, because the reflective liquid crystal panel is extremely small, providing the heat dissipation member with a curved surface results in only an extremely small difference between the center gap and the edge gaps. Accordingly, there is a problem in that there are almost no differences in the heat receiving efficiencies throughout the display region caused by the thermally-conductive filling material and the heat dissipation portion, and thus it is not possible to make the temperature distribution sufficiently uniform throughout that region.